Sagittarii Orientalis

As of now, I am playing with this list. Celestant-Prime is still too fragile for hist points cost, but is devastating when cautiously deployed as mobile artillery that can put some dent on toughest foes. Lantern of the Tempest is the artefact of my choice because of good ranged units dealing mortal wounds on hit rolls of 6. Longstrike vanguard-raptors, Lumineth sentinels, Seraphon salamanders, for example. For similar reasons, I took fulminators as my main damage dealing unit due to their high resistance to shooting attacks. Their bonus damages on the charge also mean they are less penalised than other Dracothian Guards when up against coalesced Seraphon. Vanguard-Palladors are mobile enough to grab distant objectives in Total Commitment, and also strong enough to clear chaff units holding objectives. Lastly, I chose ballistas over longstrikes because they are more durable against enemy shooting, i.e. they have lower points-per-wound. Balliastas become even more resistant to enemy shooting when tucked in cover. And I greatly appreciate it in the era when SCE is no longer the prime shooting faction in AoS, even if it means I must sacrifice reliability of firepower(i.e. number of shots).

Just became curious after looking at your list. How would you react against steamroller combat armies? Orruks, fyreslayers, Ogors, DoK for example. Sequitors are just slightly better(and expensive) liberators, and I never expect them to hold against moderately good combat units. I understand your reasoning for excluding 5~6 wound heroes. But the problem is that you are limiting even more options for SCE by doing so. Heraldor provides valuable source of AoE mortal wounds and extra mobility. Castellant gives that sweet modifier to saves. Incantor has her voidstorm scrolls to deny a spell at critical moment. Take these away and SCE are left with slower and more fragile units. Your list also gives up what I believe is still the bread and butter of SCE: evocators of both variants, dracothian guard and long range shooting. Sure, Celestant Prime and Kroak can burst out mortal wounds. But Celestant Prime is just still too fragile. And I strongly doubt Lord arcanum can achieve anything meaningful at the critical moment, mostly due to severe lack of modifier for casting values.

I am not sure about efficacy of SCE magic, because of how awful SCE wizards are at casting spells. The only spell worth taking would be an expensive comet which is far from reliable to cast. However I agree shooting is effective vs petrifex. However even then they are surprisingly effective at providing target saturation with their good saves(even vs rend -2 attacks), deathless minions save, resurrection and healing. Important petrifex characters are even tougher to remove if you consider immortis guardians. And even SCE shooting will struggle to win the game when playing new missions favouring those with good battleline and monsters/behemoths. Losing board control isn't as dehabilitating to them as it is to SCE. I will practice with the same list as all-comers roster for awhile to better understand how it works. On a side note, the new vanguard chamber looks powerful. But I am doubtful how well such list would perform when the strength of the entire list depends on 4+ save models with only 18 wounds total. Crawlers, lumineth sentinels, salamanders, kharadrons, tzeentch flamers, and even orruk arrowboyz would delight seeing such list.

I just played my second game applying GHB 2020 against ossiarch. And the mission was......focal point. I had celestant prime, lord castellant(staunch defender and lantern of the tempest), incantor, heraldor and ordinator for leaders. Then 3 mandatory units of 5 liberators, 4 fulminators, 3 vanguard palladors and 3 ballistas. Opposing player brought petrifex list. It has liege cavalos as general, and then arkhan, vokmortian, 2 units of 20 mortek guard, 3 deathriders, 1 gothizzar harvester, 1 mortek crawler and 3 immortis guardians. In the end I conceded at the end of 4th battle round. And there was a grave mistake I made. Instead of using Prime as mobile mortal wound artillery, I prematurely charged him into combat. Despite this loss at 1st battle round, I was able to remove arkhan, his immortis bodyguard(tanking wounds allocated to arkhan on 2+!), some thirty mortek guard and 3 deathriders. I had castellant, heraldor, single pallador, 5 liberators and 3 ballistas by the time I conceded. More alarming however was the gap between victory points. At the end of the game I accrued 13 points while my opponent earned at least 25 points, thanks to his arkhan, harvester and the crawler sitting near objectives most of the time. On average, my opponent earned double my victory points per battle round. He also scored as much as I did even when he conceded the central objective and partial board control. Granted, I started playing GHB 2020 missions after 4 month long hiatus since covid outbreak. And I could have used the Prime more cautiously. However, the sheer advantage granted to already strong factions with good monster/behemoth/battleline seem to broaden the gap between battletomes even further.

I find vanguard palladors to be decent. They are cheap enough to use as fast, relatively durable while being hitty enough to clear most chaff. Their ability ride the winds aetheric also comes in handy when you cannot rely on scions of the storm battle trait. For example......Total commitment.

Well, I just bought the ebook version of this year's handbook. I won't be buying anymore stormcast until the new battletome comes out. No need to boost their sales now. And sadly, Total Commitment remains as same as before.

I hope the mission Total Commitment has been modified to not hurt armies relying on reserves too much. It basically negates almost the entire stormcast(and also the poor nighthaunt) allegiance abilities. The mission might have had purpose during 2018 summer by keeping new SCE in check through penalties. Nowadays SCE suffers even with their allegiance abilties, let alone when these bonuses are negated. I always feel unjustly penalised whenever I see Total Commitment. I would have been totally convinced of its existence, had there been missions where armies relying on magic, summoning, fighting twice or fighting first were equally penalised. But no. The worst offenders of the meta suffer none of these penalties which SCE players always have to remind of.

My adage nowadays is that it is nearly impossible to write "unfriendly" SCE lists with rise of latest battletomes.

While they cannot achieve maximum firepower, the option to shoot at respectable 36" range is very useful. Vanguard raptors cannot, and they are more likely to die before getting into the range where their firepower is maximised. And I can expect Celestar Ballistas to wither enemy shooting more comfortably than raptors.

After the Seraphon rework, I am leaning towards using celestar ballistas instead of longstrike crossbows for SCE firepower. Combination of Anvils of Heldenhammer command abilities with longstrike crossbows is indeed powerful no doubt. To maximise its firepower however longstrikes need to sacrifice their 30" range, as command ability is used before the longshot ability come to effect. Longstrikes crossbow vanguard-raptors are also extremely fragile for their points, making them an easy prey to enemy shooting and magic. Tzeentch, Seraphon, Ossiarchs, Cities of Sigmar, Lumineth Realm-lords, Orruks with kunnin ruk arrer boyz, and other factions and their units can actually win the shooting/magic war against vanguard raptors. This is why I start to think Celestar Ballistas maybe more effective in the future games. Yes, generating the number of attacks based on d6 is random. However the ballistas have significantly longer range, and are more durable in terms of save and wounds per point compared to vanguard raptors. They do not have to cower in fear of getting shot by bastiladons, steagadons, ossiarch catapults, arrer boyz or Lumineth archers unlike vanguard raptors. Another advantage of the ballistas is that their effectiveness do not diminish against coalesced Seraphon, against which vanguard raptors are even more powerless. Pity that ballistas did not have their points reverted to pre-2019 handbook version. I never thought the points increase was justifiable from the first place.

I do not usually post comments on threads that were recently "revived" via threadomancy. But I must say it is very amusing to read those comments defending HoS so fervently. Especially with the wisdom of hindsight, knowing what nerfhammer HoS took last December eventually.

I actually welcome Malign Sorcery artefact becoming obsolete. Only a handful of them were being used, with vast majority of them being not even used in friendly games. It clearly shows how unbalanced the entire range of artefacts were. And I never found fun in seeing every people bringing the popular few: ethereal amulet, scales of ignax, etc. Although these powerful artefacts gave more benefits to relatively underpowered factions(scales of ignax on stardrake for example), I did not see it as a huge improvement for the weaker factions. SCE might lose an arm because of this change, but SCE was already a cripple without two other limbs anyway.

So sad to see SCE in such miserable state. Ironically, the Covid spread has put a halt to almost all group gaming activities in my region and I did not have to see SCE crushed by latest armies. Although that also means SCE will not have their new battletome soon. Assuming if the GW rules design team is actually aware of the sorry state of SCE. Speaking of which, is anti SCE sentiment still significant nowadays? Because at this point it would be almost impossible to hate(if not pity) SCE after seeing how they perform.

It is actually funny that many were disappointed by the Lumineth rules because they were underwhelming compared to, say, seraphon or tzeench. Meanwhile we SCE players are stuck with some of the worst battleline choices, battle trait and many more.

I see. Makes sense.

So I just read the latest designer's commentary for the new Seraphon. The file addressed the much debated issue of 1+ save bastiladon and its interaction with rend characteristic. Below is the full query. "Q: How does the Rend characteristic of attacks interact with the Bastiladon while it has a 1+ Save characteristic? A: An unmodified save roll of a 1 always fails. When a save roll is modified by the Rend characteristic of an attack, it can never be modified to less than 1. When a model has a Save characteristic of 1+, modified save rolls of 1 are successfully saved. This means, while the Bastiladon has a Save characteristic of 1+, only unmodified save rolls of 1 will inflict damage regardless of the Rend characteristic of the weapon used for the attack." So even with rend -2 or -3 you cannot modify the save to below 1 as per the commentary. Will it help Stardrake weather high rend attacks which are common nowadays?(KoS, Terrorgheists, Salamanders, etc)

And most of those lists without enough longstrikes never sell itself. To me, at least. Perhaps because anything outside anvilstrikes were a disappointment to me. That is, even in games where competitiveness is not pursued to an extreme. And if Kroak brings so much for SCE armies without anvilstrike, so much that it could make those lists much more viable, that simply shows how abysmal SCE is. An army that cannot stand without a crutch borrowed from other battletome. That is why I wouldn't be glad even if Kroak could make some SCE lists viable. P.S. Apologies for long haranguing. I just couldn't find any half competitive SCE lists without Anvilstrike nowadays. Seeing the new Seraphon update simply added insult to the injury. Nevertheless I will try to be more open-minded regarding this topic.

Kroak's casting/unbinding rules and spells are good, but I think he is expensive for additional command points. Despite the points reduction, Kroak costs nearly as much as 6 longstrikes. Kroak will take up points which should be spent on Stormcast units that need the extra command points most. It is a paradox. To be honest if you really want to use Kroak and be competitive at the same time, play Seraphon instead. Don't play Stormcast.

At least giving SCE dracothian guard as battleline would improve the sorry state of the army. Make them conditional battleline unit if Lord-Celestant on Stardrake or Dracoth is the general. That can also give value to a hero that is almost always never taken. Although I must say even this is a humble suggestion, seeing how several armies get cavalry or even behemoths as unconditional battleline. Flesh Eater Court, new Seraphon, Cities of Sigmar, Beastclaw Raiders, Orruk Warclans, Idoneth Deepkin, etc.

I am afraid I do not follow you. There are plenty of counterplay against Anvilstrike lists. Don't deploy valuable units within 24" of longstrikes so that their double shoot command ability cannot be used on crucial units. Put the heroes within 3" of friendly units. Or even better, deploy terrain peaces cleverly and hide your important heroes for buffs. Use numerical superiority to flood the SCE, which most of the factions can easily do. Aetherwings can be disposed of with even minimum shooting and magic. Or use double move abilities like Bladeds of Khorne and Orruk Warclans. And surprise! You can actually beat the dreaded anvilstrike by using your own shooting! Raptors are surprisingly fragile for their points. OBR catapults, skaven artillery of any kind, CoS crossbowmen/handgunners/hurricanum, bonesplitterz, bastiladons/stegadons, etc. The list goes on and on. And most of aforementioned factions actually have enough number of wounds to weather SCE shooting and counterattack with their own shooting. Running an Anvilstrike means bearing all these counterplay in mind, and that is far from "non-interactive" and effortless point and click play. And if someone still firmly believes that Anvilstrikes are too strong, they need to remember how much a big unit of raptors cost: 510pts for 18 wounds 4+ save unit with 9 models. That is over a quarter of an entire army. Of course they should be powerful when used correctly. Or are these people implying that SCE unit should never be powerful no matter how expensive and fragile that would be? Then my only answer is: Git Gud.

Looking at the new seraphon rules, I cannot help but feel SCE will dive further into low-tiers in the near future. The Coalesced Seraphon is a colossal middle finger against Anvils of Heldenhammer Vanguard-Raptors, since all Coalesced Seraphon models decrease the damage of enemy attacks by one. The Vanguard-Raptors will struggle even more to earn their points back, and they weren't even dominating the podium. On the contrary despite being perhaps the most competitive SCE list, Anvils of Heldenhammer with Vanguard-Raptor belonged to the middling lists in most tournaments. What is more funny is that Coalesced Seraphon are not only more durable, but also are sporting more effective shooting attacks compared to SCE. Thunder Lizards, the Coalesced sub-faction that can take stegadons as battlelines(yup, another faction with behemoth battlelines while SCE are stuck at horrible liberators), also has double-shoot command ability like Anvils of the Heldenhammer. With Stegadons shooting 3 rend -1 3+/3+ damage 3 ballistas, and Bastiladons their 9-shot solar engine, I can confidently say Seraphon will win shooting war against Stormcast most of the time. Did I mention that each of their 3-wound salamanders cost 80pts with ablative 3 wounds from skinks handlers, and that their shooting attack is 4/3+/3+/-2/d3 damage? Oh, and on unmodified hit rolls of 6 their shooting attacks cause d3 mortal wounds. Granted, they do have short range of 12". However with Coalesced battle trait(reducing damage of incoming attack by 1) and additional wounds from the skinks, I think they can easily approach within 12" range and start blasting their enemies. If previewing the new Seraphon battletome brought any consolation to me, it is that more people would stop thinking stormcast as "totally fine" or even "overpowered" as more factions receive excellent warscrolls and allegiance abilities like Seraphons did.

Stormcast warscroll battalions are generally terrible. Hailstorm Battery is no exception. It is almost always better to take an additional or two ballistas for the cost of the battalion and the mandatory castigator unit. The castigators especially are notorious for being useless in current Stormcast tome. And bringing two lord ordinators is an excellent way to waste your points, in most cases. He is too expensive, and just one model is enough to buff your ballistas.

I should have noticed that from your ID "jha"mslam! How silly of me. I felt the need to comment because there are always people who glance at a few results and say "nah they are fine" without further analysis. Again, congratulations for your results.

I applaud Mrigank Jha for his outstanding record at LVO with his Stormcast army. However, I do not think his record alone shows that the Stormcast is in a finely balanced state internally and externally. So far Stormcast has been showing low performance at least since the launch of 2019 handbook as can be inducted from winrates compiled by HonestWargamer. While there is a stormcast in top 5 at LVO, there is also CanCon where highest performing stormcast player took 45th place. This makes hasty generalisation based on a single tournament result risky. It would be same as claiming Imperial Guards are doing fine at current 40K meta because one of them placed in top 10 at latest GW Grand Tournament HEAT 1. Or saying Orks need nerf because they took 1st place while being ahead of several top Iron Hands(AoS equivalent of Hedonites in current 40K meta) list in the same tournament.

Speaking of which, how are the results of LVO AoS tournament? I keep searching for the results, but I struggle to find them.